Prior art, as disclosed in a related U.S. Pat. No. 7,609,650 issued Oct. 27, 2009, provides for a service quality platform of a data collection and management system to dynamically generate and download to a population of wireless devices rule-based data collection profiles. Profiles define what information is to be recorded on the devices in response to which conditions and events, as well as the conditions and events which enable the device to upload the set of information. Conditions or events comprise selected occurrences in the network or on the device that the device can sense, such as a call dropping or a user pressing a button on the device. Conditions and events also comprise the passage of time, or a request from a network administrator that the device report information back to the server.
Network monitoring solutions are well known in the art and widely employed by service providers, however, previously available solutions can only monitor and diagnose subsets of the overall telecommunications system and therefore have not provided the holistic view of network and device performance desired to efficiently identify and resolve quality issues. Typical approaches to network monitoring include “self-monitoring” wherein a network element reports on its own status and performance and reports any errors that occur during its operation. The resulting operational metrics from a single element can sometimes be indicative of a broader, system-wide problem, but rather than providing answers, problem resolution entails guesswork and extended troubleshooting, which wastes valuable resources and lowers customer confidence. Another common approach includes placing probes at various points in the network to determine if network elements are functioning according to specification. Sometimes referred to as “sniffers”, “log monitors” or “event monitors”, these monitoring systems are effective at identifying performance issues with a particular network element, but have failed to capture problems that stem from the interfaces among network elements, i.e., these solutions do not address the case where individual elements are performing according to specifications, but problems occur when those elements interact with one another. This far more complex and subtle set of problems has costly consequences to network operators when services cannot be delivered to end customers. Another monitoring approach known in the art involves pre-programmed service monitors, using specific elements to perform service transactions which emulate “real-world” transaction activity; end-to-end performance is then monitored and the results reported. While these solutions catch systematic failures, they cannot detect intermittent or dispersed problems, subtle impairments, or device or end-user specific issues. Further, they can only test anticipated usage scenarios and fail to adapt to new usages and interactions between services. Another mechanism for generating metrics involves integrating the software for creating the metrics with application software that is embedded on or downloaded onto the wireless device; this is in contrast to integrating metric-generating commands with, for example, the operating system software of the wireless device during the device manufacturing process.